Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

New Capabilities

Co-led the research

At 20 kelvin, just above absolute zero, most body-centered cubic metals turn brittle. Two experimental niobium-titanium alloys did not: they kept absorbing stress without a measurable shift toward brittle fracture.

Updated Nov 1

New Capabilities

Operating A-Lab autonomous materials facility

Multi-agent AI systems now design, run, and analyze materials experiments with minimal human input. In January 2026, China's Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology published MARS, coordinating 19 large language model agents with robots. A September 2026 paper in Nature Machine Intelligence introduced MatBrain, a lightweight system that generated 30,000 candidate crystal structures in 48 hours.

Updated Oct 26

New Capabilities

As of September 2026: Demonstrated compact laser-driven accelerator for muon production

In June 2026, researchers at a Romanian laser facility fired the world's most powerful beam through a two-meter concrete wall and into a black van. The shadow it cast revealed a stack of lead blocks—the first image produced almost entirely by muons, particles created on demand by the laser.

Updated Sep 26